 Okay, good evening and good afternoon everyone. Thank you so much for coming to this very late afternoon session. We really appreciate your commitment and your passion for the cause. My name is Iris Bonette. I'm a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and the Direct Women in Public Policy program. So our topic today is very close to my heart. I'm shaking up beliefs and behaviors about genders, gender ideologies, perceptions in our workplace, in our society, in politics, and really everywhere. I will introduce our distinguished panelists in just a moment, but wanted to offer some remarks before we get started. The first, I just thought I wanted to quickly repeat a study that I'm sure many of you know about, but it has become a bit of a, I don't know, a typical example, an example that just drives it home very quickly for all of us. And in addition, we have somebody on the panel who is an artist himself and we'll talk about his work with orchestras in just a moment. So the study I have in mind, of course, is the study that examined the introduction of curtains on major symphony orchestras in the United States. This happened in the 70s and it happened even though orchestra directors at the time were absolutely convinced that they of all people only care about the quality of the music. And certainly blinding themselves to demographic characteristics of the musicians would not matter. But in fact, they did introduce curtains started by the Boston Symphony Orchestra and had musicians audition behind the curtain. And so selection committees, orchestra directors could only hear the music but not see what the musicians looked like. It turns out the curtains helped increase the fraction of women who moved on to future rounds by 50 percentage points and helped increase the fraction of women on these major orchestras from about 5% in the 70s to now almost 40%. This is very different from other orchestras in this hemisphere. For example, if we think of the Vienna Philharmonic or the Berlin Philharmonic, where we still have only about 10% to 15% women. So the curtain is an easy way for us to understand that we do have biases, even well-intentioned people who in addition are not just well-intentioned but have an economic incentive to maximize the quality of the music, even those people fall prey to these stereotypes and these biases. So that's what we're up against. And this is, I think, good news and bad news. I mean, the bad news is obvious. Bias is everywhere. And the good news is bias is everywhere. What do I mean with that? This is not about pointing fingers. A misconception that we often have is that men might be more biased against women or women might be more biased, let's say, against male kindergarten teachers. That is not actually what the research says. It does matter a bit who you are, but I can assure you that the action is not so much in who you are, but it is much more in who we see. So if we don't see male kindergarten teachers and do not see female engineers, we do not naturally associate those jobs with men or women, respectively. And both men and women observers, male and female observers or evaluators, are affected by that bias. I want to conclude my introductory remarks by giving you one other example. This is now, in fact, just me observing what a company did is not based on a rigorous evaluation, but I wanted to suggest to you that we, of course, have to work in our formal procedures, such as blinding ourselves to demographic characteristics of job applicants, but also we have to work on the informal culture. We sometimes refer to it as culture, the norms prevalent in our families, in our organizations and in society. And so one company that was quite concerned about microaggressions, we sometimes refer to these types of behaviors where women, but also other traditionally disadvantaged groups, feel that they are not given the same credit, for example, for their comments or are interrupted. You might have heard the new word. I don't actually know who created it. The new word in English for that is called he-peating. So, yeah, so that some of us feel that we've just made the comment and then somebody else repeated it a bit later on and then that person was given credit for the comment. Some of us feel that we're more likely to be interrupted, et cetera, these are microaggressions, are microbehaviors. So that company was very concerned about that part of culture. And of course, this is beyond formal process. And so what they did was they focused on meetings because everyone is in meetings all the time. That's one place where these behaviors take place. And they first started to measure what was happening. Literally observing meetings, but also interviewing people about the kinds of experiences they have in meetings. And that's where the typical organization stops if at all they measure these microbehaviors. But that's not enough for us to change our behaviors. That raises awareness, but in order to move from well-intentioned, virtuous intentions, we have to think about how to translate those into actions. So then the organization identified the desired types of behaviors. So what would a good behavior look like? And a good behavior might actually turn a microaggression into micro sponsorship where something I actually practice in how rigorously, where I might then bring it back. So I might say, John, I loved your comment. I'm so happy you build on what Sarah just told us before. And Sarah, why don't you build on that a bit more because I don't think we went into quite that depth that is required. So that's micro sponsorship. So all of us can be micro sponsors. But anyway, so they wrote down the kinds of behaviors they wanted to see and then, and this is gonna sound extreme to you. They introduced little red flags. So now you go to that company, you go to a meeting room, and you have some pencils in the middle and paper and a box of little red flags. And everyone picks up a red flag and you raise the flag whenever a transgression of the norms that you have agreed on occurs. Now I'm saying it is an extreme form, but I want you to think about the red flag, not so much specifically about the red flag, but as a bit of a metaphor, suggesting that making this work is work. We have to think hard about how to enable all of us to live our virtuous intentions, our gender equality that we all in fact aspire to. We have to think about ways to make this happen. And it might be a red flag. It might be a devil's advocate in the room. It might be an app that you fill out right after the meeting, kind of sharing your comments about the meeting, whatever it might be, but it has to be more than just a survey where we identify what's wrong. And today we're here joined by a panel who really has been amazing in moving our needle, in moving the needle forward and being role models themselves, but also in doing the work in understanding what is going on in our world. I'm gonna start with your right. Gary Barker has been a tremendous really trailblazer, I would say, in focusing on men, on how men think about gender equality, how men perceive gender equality or inequality, how men think about their own masculinity, how men can play a very important role in moving the needle on gender violence. Gary is the president and CEO of Promundo. To Gary's left, we have Caroline. Caroline Tostat joins us from Procter & Gamble, where she's the group president of North America. Caroline is very passionate about gender equality, has played a huge role at PNG, but in many other places as well, promoting gender equality and also linking it to the business case. She is also the executive sponsor of PNG's gender equality efforts. Thank you very much for being here. Then to Caroline's left, we have Ahmed, Ahmed Sarmast. He is the founder of Afghanistan National Institute of Music. And he's also director of the Afghan Women Orchestra, which is an all-female symphony orchestra. He's been a leading thinker in how art and culture, more broadly, can level the playing field for men and women. Then to my left, we have Maryam, Maryam Monsef. She is minister of status of women in Canada and has had a number of roles before becoming a minister, advancing women in NGOs and public policy, including thinking about the role of religion, faith organizations. And she does bring her passion now to the Canadian Parliament to improve conditions for women, girls and children and communities so that everyone can thrive. Thank you all of you for being here. And I'd like to start with Gary and Gary ask you to share a bit more about the work of Pramundo, but also your work to help us think about masculinity, help us think about how we might be able to overcome some of these stereotypes. Thanks, Cyrus. First I have to see if I can do this so other men in the room can do it. I wanna support your idea and build on it. Is that how it works? Okay, it was painful for a moment, but we can do it, we can do it. Seriously, I mean, this work with men and boys builds on what women have been trying to figure out for a very long time, which is how do we change power and norms? No small thing. And when you try to put those words together, men and gender equality, if we walk into a room and say, men, do you wanna talk about gender equality? It's about, yeah, about as much as I wanna go see the urologist, for example. But we've still been pressing ahead. And I think we've been both learning at the program level and then doing lots of research about what drives men on these issues. A piece of research that we've done called the International Men and Gender Equality Survey or Images, we've done this now in about 36 countries. The good news we can look at is just about everywhere in the world that we look, the younger generation, the 18 to 30 year olds, kind of get it. More likely to view their sisters as equals, more likely to do at least a little bit of the caregiving, more likely to think that the world of equality between men and women is something they believe in. The same time, we find that there's kind of a resurgence of this tough guy version of manhood. Particularly as we think about a generation of young people who, as we're talking about at this event, don't really know what the adult world holds for them in terms of what most men still define their identities around, which is being the provider of the worker. What is the world of work going to look like if I as a man define myself as mostly working? What's coming up for me? And I think we're surmising that a lot of the resistance and kind of a angry and uncertain young men, kind of proposing a little, or a bit of a backlash happening there, is a lot about this moment of uncertainty. We're not quite sure, we think equal makes sense. We're not quite sure what it means though if we're heading off into a workplace that may or may not be there for us. So what are we pulling out of that in terms of what can promote change? One, we've got to start early. And we certainly think that if we can get it right with this, the biggest youth generation that our planet will ever have, that we've got a chance really to build on it. And so as we continue to do all the stuff we need to do to support women, and particularly our worker and empowering young girls, we need to make sure we're doing some work with their brothers and our sons so that they're part of this journey as well. A few ways we're trying to do this. One, we see a huge power in involved fatherhood. One of the things that seems to drive change no matter where we work is if we see men taking caregiving seriously. I won't make many male friends in the audience, but we have to acknowledge daily basis average women do three times the amount of the care of our homes and those we love, children and others every single day. So a little bit less in places like Canada, a little bit more in some places that you know. But women do this. They typically don't get paid for it. We don't acknowledge it in economies. And where men do more of it, their children grow up to be more gender equitable, more empowered daughters and more gender equitable sons. It's also an easier conversation to have than starting off with, hey guys, want to talk about sexual harassment. Hey, do you want to talk about gender based violence? It is given that 80% of men in the planet will be biological fathers and all of us have somebody that we love that we should be caring for. It's an easier place to start the conversation. So that's another piece that we see. And I suppose the other, just as a point of strategy, I mean, we're in this me too moment. We think we've got a call out. This is of course about some men in power who wield it in ways that we need to call them out for. But our research finds that these young men that I talked about, a fifth to a third have told us in the last month, they've done some kind of virtual or real life harassment or use of violence. So this is not just a few powerful men doing this. This is daily stuff that men and boys think is okay. So we've got to go deeper with that. And so part of the conversation we think is to say, one, we have to continue to call men out. The micro stuff that you said of the red flag, it is trying to figure out ways that we get the men who don't think this is okay and feeling their gut anger when they see other men do it to speak out in appropriate ways. The other is to say, we're not having a debate with men about whether this is the right thing to do. It is right, there is no more conversation about that. But it doesn't always have to taste like sort of bitter medicine. And part of what we try to do is to say, we also want you to have skin in this game. And our research, and I think if men sort of, if we look inside and think, we've all seen growing up examples of bullying or we've experienced it. We saw the fight or we were the victim of that fight. We've all witnessed what these, what we sometimes call toxic masculinities do. So it's also getting men to say, when we step away from those versions of manhood, our lives get better too. We have better mental health. We seek, we ask directions when we need to. We have better relationships. Our children smile at us more. So that we also say, men have a stake in this. It's good for the world. It's good for our bottom lines and our corporations and our economies. But we as men have staked in this. And part of what we're trying to do is to say that you have something to gain from this. While you're also gonna have to question your power and privilege, you will gain something. And we think you'll find that your life gets a little bit better. Building on your idea. Thank you very much. I'm Gary for your great comments. Moving on to Caroline. Caroline, you're of course a role model, a woman at the top who has made it herself, but also somebody who thinks deeply about what the workplace should look like, what organizations can do to level the playing field. Sherry Bit, with us please. First of all, you guys are doing great work. That is wonderful to hear. And there's so many parallels to it. So a huge part of the conversation that we're trying to spark is really the opportunity and the need or urgency to continue to broaden the definition of leadership. And leadership within the workplace. And how do we think about that? Because the definition of leadership today is just too narrow and there's too much bias in it. So the obvious question, I guess with that, especially sitting here in Davos, is why do we have a situation where women are half of the population, women have more advanced degrees than men in over 100 countries? Do we have women massively underrepresented at the top of organizations? Organizations, institutions, and in many cases, governments. And so the answer, at least part of the answer, nothing is ever the answer, but part of the opportunity to address this that we think is just in the assumptions that we carry, we broadly a society that hold women back. There are a lot of assumptions that we just take unto ourselves and all of these assumptions are based in bias. And so we are talking about them as myths and we are working very hard to bust the myths. The myths go something like this. Iris mentioned them at the very beginning. Women kind of doubt themselves. Women need to be a little more aggressive. Women need to figure out how to manage their emotions. Women need to have more confidence. I wish women would be a little more ambitious. And it's part of the headlines that underneath it are the heap eating or all of those pieces. And part of the reason we get into that discussion is because our definition of leadership is based on who we see, right? It's the bias of who we saw for all of that time period. And so our definition of what leadership looks like is rooted in male behavior. It's unconscious, it's just what we define it as. And then when we see behavior that's different from that, often from women and also from men, it gets judged negatively. It gets judged as a gap versus that behavior. That's this whole notion of bias. And there are so many examples of that. Iris, you gave some great ones. One of the ones that for me is just so simple is the HP study where they said, if there are five requirements for a job, and we do this study, and women have four of those five requirements, and they'll say, I'm not sure. I don't think I'm quite ready for that. And they choose not to apply. And men, on average, may have two of those requirements and say, I think I got this. I think I got this. I'm gonna apply and I'm gonna put my name in. Now, for the men that applied, we just went with it. That was normal. And for the women that didn't apply, we said, wow, there's a gap. I think they lack confidence. Now, I don't know, when I learned math, four was greater than two. And so I think you actually have a system initiative that you keep saying if we just compared the four to the two, we might make a different decision. But instead, we think about who applied and who didn't apply, and we lose the opportunity to advance and capture the contribution of great talent. And so what we're really focused on is how do we take leadership and expand that definition? How do we expand that definition of normalcy? And how do we get a broader definition which recognizes that men and women are different, which is wonderful, recognizes that individuals are different, that women have inherent strengths, they have wonderful capability of being leaders as do men. And if we found a way to get the entirety of that, we would really have a much more gender equal world. And we'd have the business results and everything to go with that because for certain, we'd be in a better place. So that's part of what we are looking at. Thank you very much, Caroline. In fact, I'm gonna add a footnote to what you just said about a study that has just come out that most of you probably don't know about, so it's not even published, but it's the PhD dissertation at Stanford that just drives your point home in that it's even worse, in that what he looked at was what we put in our CVs by gender, and it is distressing. So the very same thing that specifically looked at them, STEM jobs, and then in particular, I'm gonna now focus on coding for a moment. So Java, for example, women only put Java as a language that they know about if they have done very many courses and have programmed, et cetera. And men are kind of putting it on if they've basically ever heard of Java, I'm not exaggerating. But it's a very nice piece of work, nice as in not for the results, but for the approach. I mean, very quantitative, and it gets kind of even more distressing. The labor market doesn't take that into account. So he's an economist, he's of course interested in, we economists always think, oh, there's bias, but the market will fix it because companies, of course, are smart, right? They want to maximize returns and profits, and so they will, of course, already have incorporated that, and but no, not true. Employers take this as face value, and if she doesn't put Java there, she's not gonna get an interview. So I think that gender difference in self-confidence or what we perceive as competence or at which level we would perceive it as a competence is a real challenge for us. So thank you for sharing that. Please, so we're now moving a bit kind of from the micro level more to the macro level, kind of starting to ask ourselves, so beyond to the individual, beyond the workplace, so what role does art might have? Art as a way for us to have portraits on the walls that might depict different people portraying role models for us, but also art and orchestras and music, and Ahmed really has been quite a trailblazer in that respect, tell us more about that. Thank you very much, and it's a great pleasure for me to be this afternoon here with such inspiring people, surrounded by such inspiring people, and to share my strong belief about the soft power of arts and culture and precisely about the soft power of music in promoting gender equality as well as empowering girls and women. And to share and to give example, I probably will focus on my parts in Afghanistan, and I'll be sharing the stories, are we addressing gender inequality in Afghanistan, and how we promoting and how we acting to empower girls and women in a country where they've been deprived from every single human rights. Up to 2001, they did not have an opportunity to go to school. They were prevented from their very basic human rights to contribute to the promotion or to the progress of the country. Let live aside participating in arts and culture and in such an area as music, which has been always considered a loose reputation for girls and women in Afghanistan. In a post-Taliban Afghanistan, I returned in 2008 to make a small contribution to the betterment of the life of children generally, but also to make a small contribution to the betterment of the life and the social status, artistic status of girls and women in Afghanistan. And what took me to Afghanistan was my strong belief in the soft power of music. And my idea was to build the ruin lives of Afghan children through music and through education. And therefore, I established this Afghanistan nationalist of music within the Ministry of Education of Afghanistan, where the majority of students are coming from a disadvantaged backgrounds. Kids who used to work in the streets of Afghanistan, kids who come from the orphanages and girls from the such a most undeveloped and far provinces of the country like Kunal, in Pakistan, where the girls do not have access to primary education, leave later side having access to a state of arts music education program. We in our school are very much committed to gender equality and therefore every year when we're enrolling new students, 50% of the school enrollment are reserved for girls. Well, another 50% of the school are reserved for disadvantaged kids. What, how we can show through to the community through music and arts that what can girls can achieve? Playing aside of a male in a 50-member orchestra, that was probably a dream for many Afghans. But we at Afghanistan nationalist of music created that opportunity. Our girls and boys managed to change the perception about Afghanistan when they traveled to the United States in 2013. Boys and girls playing in a stage together in a sold out concert in Carnegie Hall. That was probably something that the politician of Afghanistan failed to achieve. To show a better side of Afghanistan, a positive side of Afghanistan, the positive changes that occurred in the last 15 years. Last year we traveled to Dawos with a 30-member symphony orchestra entirely made of young girls of Afghanistan, conducted by a very young, inspiring Afghan from the Kunal province. And this concert had been performed right after the speech of Mr. Trump. And probably that was one of the most positive message that the world can get in that day. We are talking here about how arts and culture can do. In a country like Afghanistan, there's still domestic violence is a big issue. Early marriages a big issue for the girls of the country. Lack of opportunities, it's a big issue for girls and women of Afghanistan. But the formation of an orchestra, a 30-member orchestra made only of young girls can send a very strong message to the community and to the old women of Afghanistan that we can do that. We achieve this. You can achieve that also. And last year, when these girls, brave girls played here in Dawos, again, they achieved something that the politician of Afghanistan failed to achieve. They brought the most beautiful picture of Afghanistan and Afghanistan that for which we all strive. And Afghanistan that creates equal opportunities and embraces diversity. Wonderful, well, thank you very much for sharing. And I can't help but ask you. So, I mean, we just heard from Caroline, self-confidence as a challenge for women. And here we have your girls. What did you do? What's your magic? What can we learn from it for our organizations? In addition that we are assigning or we are preserving a 50% of our enrollment for the girls, we try to motivate and inspire our girls. It's not only them, but we also closely work with their families. We have to change the perception about the status and the position and the rule of women. First of all, within the families of these girls. We should get the support of their brothers and their fathers and their uncles because in Afghanistan, it's not a girl who make a decision. It's not the close family member. It's not the parents who are making a decision. But also a religious leader, member of the community, close, other close relatives like uncle, aunties, they also make a decision about the future of a child. And therefore, we're not only working very closely with the girls, but also with the families and with the community. And we've been, we are very, very lucky to have the support of the families. And in 2014, one of our concerts come under attack of the terrorists and they send a suicide bomber who exploded himself in one of our concerts. And after that, my expectation that was that no one gonna come back to the school. No one gonna allow their charge to come to the school, especially girls. But luckily, it's what's happening in Afghanistan. That's the response of the people of Afghanistan is all of us very positively and very beautifully to their violence. Next day, when we return to the school or the faculty return to the school and the students return to the school, there was not a single absent students in that day. The girls themselves are very, very brave. When we are talking here while we're standing for these girls, the entire school community stand for the girls. But they themselves are very brave also. In a country where music is considered to be a loose reputation, they're briefly, they know that what they're risking. They're risking their future. Sometimes they're making a job, that's a must. Anyway, we're not gonna find a husband because we're learning music. But at the same time, they're briefly being aware of every single risk that they continue their education. And they're safe to be the best role model for the community and for the women and the girls of Afghanistan. Thank you very much for sharing that. I mean, it of course also reminds me of Gary's work, right? It does require the family, it does require the men, and it does, as we have heard other people say, it requires a village to really get to gender equality. So thank you very much for sharing that. Maryam, I introduced you as minister of status of women of Canada. But I also know that you are in fact very passionate about Afghanistan as well, and you're the co-founder of the Red Pashmina Campaign, which empowers women of Afghanistan through education. So tell us about your work, your passion, and give us a bit, also a kind of bigger perspective, kind of trying to make it even more macro of what role public policy plays, what role maybe religion plays, and these are huge questions. But give us a bit of a take of kind of how you think about those. Thank you, Professor. As I see all this feminism on display here, I'm mindful that each of us have our unique definitions of feminism, and I'll talk a little bit about the governments of Canada's intersectional approach to feminism and how it shapes our approaches and our policies and programs and conversations. And I'll divide that into five pieces maybe in honor of the Sustainable Development Goal Number Five, the goal that is bringing us all together, united across backgrounds and expertise. And I'll try to fit in a couple of stories in there too. As these distinguished speakers were touching on, their area of expertise, I just had a moment where I thought about everything it's taken for somebody like me to be part of a conversation like this in the context of the World Economic Forum, whether it's my own mother and Afgan Widow who left Afghanistan so that her daughters could have a better life, whether it's Canada and the open doors and the open arms that we were received with when we settled there as refugees, teachers and educators, up to my incredible team, Team Canada, and those who are doing the logistics to put a production like this together, whether it's those who have done the organizing or those who are doing the cleaning so that the bathrooms we use are cleaned and the tables we sit at are clear. I just have to take a moment to honor all of that. And also to recognize as the Prime Minister did yesterday that a lot of the people, the vast majority of the people who are to benefit or be affected by what we're talking about here will never be in rooms like this, never see themselves and we're trying to change that, aren't we? In 2013, through a grant, I went to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women as a board member of the YWCA as a young woman, I wasn't gonna apply for the grant because who am I to have a seat at a place like that? But I had mentors who pushed me and Lynn Zimmer from Peterborough's YWCA said, you're gonna do it, I'll help you with the application and the application I sent it to her and she said you can do better, so she sent it back and I applied and I'm so glad I did because I got the money and I went to the UN and there, that was a really politicizing moment for me because I realized for all the things that Canada does well, this was a previous regime, we still had a lot of work to do but it was also empowering because I saw myself in a space with people from all over the world, we worship differently, we speak different languages, we come from different walks of life, but we're united and the goal that year was to end all forms of violence against women and girls and what I learned that year was it still applies today and it's a nod to the feminists and the leaders who've been doing this work as challenging as this work is, as intersectional as realities are, we actually know how to get there, don't we? The work that we have to do to address gender-based violence or to achieve gender equality, it has to be across sectors, it has to be across cultures, it has to be across faith groups, it has to be intergenerational and we have to engage and include men and boys as part of this work and we have to rely on the power of stories to move people because indeed that is the only thing that often moves us and so I take that learning and bring it to my work as the minister for women in Canada. There are five things that we're doing as a government that takes into account the spectrum of violence and harms and stereotypes that gender diverse persons and women and girls experience in this shared pursuit we have for gender equality. The first is around our Governor and Council appointments so the Prime Minister's now famous because it's 2015 move to have a gendered balanced cabinet, a feminist Prime Minister openly and proudly a feminist that sends a wave. We're working to increase the number of women and diverse groups of women around corporate boardrooms and Bill C-25 is in Canada's Senate right now and that will be a game changer. We're also working to take a policy and analytical policy tool that is available to all of you free of charge on the status of women's website which is GBA plus. It stands for gender based analysis plus. It's an intersectional feminist lens applied to every program and policy that the cabinet of Canada considers and that changes the conversations and it changes the outcome. So if we're talking about resource development projects if we're gonna be mining somewhere if we're gonna be approving a pipeline what does it mean when we send a significant number of men with money into remote communities and what does it mean for their sexual harassment policies? What does it mean for the influx of energy? What does it mean for sex work? What does it mean for human trafficking? What does it mean for violence? We take that into consideration and that gender based analysis tool is something that my shop is responsible for monitoring the quality and the consistency of and it's something that we're really proud to apply to the G7 which we are chairing this year. And so every ministerial that is held during this year where Canada is presiding over the G7 presidency will have gender woven throughout the agenda. And it's not been done before but we are very much looking forward to the challenge and we're also working to ensure that role models so many of them are here so many their stories we don't hear are part of the conversation we have with Canadians and the international community during our presidency. We have the first federal strategy to address and prevent gender based violence and it's funded and it's focused some of you were there at the New York Times panel yesterday, prevention, support for survivors and their families and more responsive legal and justice system. We recently introduced Bill C65 which works to end and prevent sexual harassment and violence in the workplace. This is the first of its kind and it's just been tabled in the House of Commons this past fall. And then our finance minister my honorable colleague Bill Morneau is working very hard on applying a gendered lens to the budget. So this year's budget will have an intersectional gendered lens applied to it so that we understand what it means when we spend on programs and policies for women and girls and gender diverse peoples those living in rural and remote areas versus urban centers. What does it mean for indigenous communities and migrant persons? What does it mean for persons with disabilities and exceptionalities? Seniors versus young people and so this is the first of its kind the OECD is helping us with this and we're very much and I'm certainly as minister for women looking forward to continuing and building on this work. I'm telling you this in this way because it is not just upon NGOs to do this work it is not just up to governments to do this work nor is it just a social good a moral imperative to be focused on gender equality. You heard it in the Prime Minister's speech you heard it among the conversation we had here today there's an economic imperative at stake here. When women and girls do well, communities thrive. And the only way that we're going to remove barriers is if we're working together across cultures and faith groups and sectors and generations and genders and backgrounds and I will end with this. When my family moved to Peterborough, Ontario and I will say at this moment I'm a privileged Afghan Canadian I'm the lucky one percent of refugees that not only make it safely across borders but we're able to integrate and belong and somebody like me to feel empowered to put her name on a ballot and then end up here in this moment in time. When we got to Peterborough though we were broken and we had gone through that experience of music being outlawed and women and girls not being able to go to school my mother herself a teacher couldn't work and so as a widow how is she gonna take care of three little girls? In the community I come from that I represent proudly in the House of Commons Peterborough, Ontario, we found many allies who didn't speak our language but let us in and among them were the Sisters of St. Joseph and I'm gonna end with the story of Sister Ruth Hennessey whose recent diagnosis with cancer has her recovering from surgery for which I ask all of you to pray and send positive thoughts her way. Sister Ruth welcomed us into her home at Casa Maria Refugee Homes. Sister Ruth helped us get over along with the community the pain and the trauma of leaving our loved ones and our homeland and our culture and our language behind. Sister Ruth helped furnish our house when we finally were able to move into a home that wasn't her sister Ruth stuck with me throughout my awkward teenage years and almost at risk moments in my life. Sister Ruth has been one of my most ardent champions and advocates and Sister Ruth is probably one of the most fierce feminists that I know. Why am I telling you this? In this work that we're doing we're bringing in new allies into the feminist movement whose expertise and passion and new ideas and innovation we so desperately need. But we cannot lose touch with those who have brought us to this moment in time when the World Economic Forum is chaired entirely by women when it's cool to be feminists when it's important to focus on gender equality. And faith groups, as Dr. Ahmed said play a really important role in this work and we must continue to honor their contributions but also of all the feminist leaders who have brought us to this point. And if you wanna know what this man's work is doing go to YouTube, Google I am a girl and you get to see his work in action where women and girls in Afghanistan are part of an orchestra with other men and boys and it's making waves and if we can do it in Afghanistan after what the Taliban tried to do when they tried to rob us of culture, of identity, of belonging, safety, security and education it is possible to do it everywhere. And the privilege I share in this room with all of you is we have the power to make that a reality everywhere. Thank you. Thank you very much to the panelists for these insightful remarks but also for this beautiful, the beauty of the panel. I don't think I have recently been on a panel that was intellectually stimulating but also deeply moving. So thank you very much. We have microphones and while you're thinking about your comments or your questions let me try to summarize some key highlights which is gonna be hard because we learned so much but I'm gonna try and maybe make five points. I think a thread that went through all comments was the thread of you need to see to believe. So numbers do matter whether this is at the top in Canada and political leadership whether this is on boards, whether this is at PNG with role models such as Caroline. We cannot imagine if we don't see it. So numbers do matter. Sometimes that means quotas as Ahmad reminded us of sometimes that means other types of programs to make sure everyone can advance to the top. The second theme that I have heard is the theme and we've certainly heard it now very loudly of metrics. If we don't measure, what doesn't get measured doesn't count. Also what doesn't get measured cannot be fixed. So gender based budgeting, gender auditing, of our policies of our decisions is the first step for us to understand whether anything is broken and if it is broken, then to actually take action. Thirdly, I mentioned that before that it takes a village but I think I'm gonna now use a different term because that has been used before by wonderful people. But I think I'm gonna call it, it takes an orchestra. Yes. And maybe that is gonna be the metaphor of our session here. It takes an orchestra, quite literally, it takes an orchestra for the beauty of the music but also I wanna use it a bit more metaphorically. It does take men, it does take boys, it does take fathers, it does take many of us, it does take a coalition and it does take coordination across sectors, across countries and I think the orchestra in fact is a beautiful example of different instruments of a lot of coordination and a lot of collaboration and in that sense maybe that's gonna be our new metaphor. And fourthly, and then I have one last point, Caroline, Maryam and really many of us have talked about the business case. Yes, there is a moral case and we always, always have to talk about the moral case, not just make it about the business case. But it is a happy windfall profit, I wanna call it that there's also a business case. So diversity does help creativity and so that is something we should think about. We sometimes refer to this as collective intelligence. There's in fact now research which measures the intelligence of teams, the same way that we measure individuals intelligence, which is called then collective intelligence and they can show that diverse teams outperform homogeneous teams, which of course doesn't mean that diversity is easy to make work but at least there's hope that there is also an economic benefit at the end. And the last comment I wanna make is around you called it soft power, we could also call it kind of a combination of us being courageous enough to be norm entrepreneurs, I wanna call this as in we all are not just constrained by the norms of our societies but we actually shape the norms. So that's what I'm gonna call norm entrepreneurship. And I think that's an opportunity for all of us. Wherever we are in whatever country in whatever position we can shape the kinds of things that we deem acceptable or not. And Gary reminded us of that very early on, we need to have the courage to speak out and raise the red flag or whatever the equivalent of the red flag might be. And on that note, I'd love to open the floor for your comments, your questions, your thoughts and we have a mic right there, please. That was beautiful. And also please tell us who you are. We don't wanna keep this very anonymous. It'd be wonderful to know kind of who we are. I'm Sarah Durkin, I'm with Science Gallery International. We're with the Portals Exhibition and I'd highly recommend going out to see a Wavana in particular, which is about the first female shaman of her tribe in the Amazon. And it's an amazing powerful story of leadership and transformation. But this is an orchestra related question. So 40 years ago they fixed this in terms of the composition of orchestras but that hasn't been replicated across the world and we don't see it in composers or in conductors for orchestras. So that's why it was so wonderful last year to see two women conductors not only playing in the orchestra but also leading the orchestra and that's incredibly important. And I think it shows how we have to just not stop when we fix one problem, we have to keep moving on and on to the next one. Thank you. Yes, absolutely. Ahmat did you wanna comment on the female directors? And my sense is that in orchestras of course we see a similar pyramid that we see in many other places. I'm Swiss originally, so right from here and from Lucerne and there's something like the Lucerne Festival and they had a theme last year it was called prima donna where we had all female directors. And yes, so these initiatives are still important. I'm tired of the argument that there's no pipeline. There are, they are but we have to invite them. So thank you for making that point. Ahmat, any comments on that? When we are talking about the orchestra and the conductor I normally always give the orchestra we consider the formation of orchestras in Afghanistan as a platform also failure for building bridges between ethnically divided different group of African people. We teach through participation in orchestra, our kids the way they respect each other the way they get engaged in the dialogue during their performance the way they support each other to create a beautiful piece of music. And by the end, when they are harmoniously they complete it and create a beautiful piece of music in the same way they also learning to outside of the orchestra outside of the school boundaries also to respect each other's differences to whether it's a religious difference whether it's a linguistic difference whether it's a cultural difference or ethnic difference but they should respect that differences which is a beauty for our nation but live in peace and harmony as a nation. Other questions, please, Laura. Thank you very much, great panel. Carolyn, I'd like to probe a little bit more on the confidence. Yes, please. Okay. Because I think it got misinterpreted. Yeah. So, one hypothesis I have around this and your risk knows about this is that women engage in what's known as disarming mechanisms which is ritual humility, ritual, you know, I'm not the expert on this. Ritual apology, women apologize seven times more than men do. Ritual question, do you think I should get promoted? Ritual mitigation, ritual modesty. So they do these disarming mechanisms, ritual smiling because they know that if they go into the office and say I'm qualified, I want the promotion now they get social negative consequence from doing that. So it's not that they don't have confidence perhaps but it's because they have to engage in these disarming mechanisms. And so to build on your micro sponsoring which I like that very much, how do we deal with that? So I think there's a couple of things. And so my comment on this, and I use the HP example because people think it's very intuitive but I think there's a point missing in that. So as I talk about the fact that women, what we call myths, right? This notion of well, I don't know and I doubt myself. That's a myth. That is false, right? And so there are these behaviors that we have learned and we have trained ourselves on because that has become what's acceptable. And part of the reason we have these behaviors and these compensating variables is because we get seen versus this other definition of leadership, this other definition of normal. And the implication to that is that the workplace is fine, right? The workplace is fine. It's the women that are broken. The women need to be fixed. And that's the piece that I think is wrong relative to the definition of leadership. So we don't need to fix the women. We don't need to do that. Nor do I want us to for the next 50 years always have to have compensating behaviors because of this very narrow definition of leadership. So what we're really pushing for is we need to broaden the definition of what effective leadership is. The women are not broken. The women do not need fixing. I work with so many women and men. There are a lot of women that are very, very confident. And I'll share a story with you. People who work at P&G, women and men, they're within the top graduates from their colleges. They are highly accomplished. They're less than 1% makes it through the crazy recruiting work that we put them through. And yet I've had conversations with women who say, well, I don't know and I'm not really sure and I feel this. And so none of this is to deny individual feelings. We all have those feelings. Some men have those feelings. But the harm is when we generalize it and we make it about all women and we think that becomes a trend and we judge it according to that. So take the HP study. We have created this narrative around women's confidence. We've written books about it by women. Take the flip side. We've got a situation where two out of five characters say we didn't label that. We just called it normal. So the two out of five qualities, nobody labeled that. Nobody said was that overconfident. We didn't do anything on that, but we only labeled this side. And so this whole notion of broadening the spectrum of how we define leadership should enable us not to have these compensating behaviors and not to be called out as aggressive or bossy because then it got too close and there's still a difference there. So again, what we would advocate for is we have to talk about these myths. We have to talk about the myths of women don't need fixing. The system needs fixing. The pipeline is not insufficient. There's more than enough people there. Tech is not a guy thing. There's many, many capable people in tech. A woman's place is not uniquely in the home. In fact, exactly as Gary said, when men and women share that, the children do better, the children excel. So, and sexual harassment is not a woman's issue to solve. Sexual harassment is a societal issue that we must speak out and really honor the brave women who speak out about it and the men who champion them. All of these are the myths that we talk about. But I think it starts with broadening the definition of leadership and not getting into narrow definitions because when we do that, we miss the opportunity for great progression of talent. Thank you very much, Caroline. More comments and questions. I'm gonna go to this side of the room. Yes, please. And I see we have two more minutes. Maybe would you knock us so far away with the mic? Because we have one other question, so we'll just have both of those. And then the panelists, panelists, no, no, excuse me. I'm so sorry. No worries. Hi, I'm Maria Suarez. I am the CFO of Eco Patrol, but it's a Colombian oil and gas company. I have a question for the panel because for going to the glass ceiling and breaking it, part of the discussion has always been centered on what women needs and what in the workplace we do not need to do for women. But we have husbands and we need to share the caregiving. So apart from parental leave and sharing the parental leave, what else do you believe will be useful to do as public policy or in the workplace? So we, and on what is for men to share more on the caregiving? Should I go ahead with the question? Yes, please go ahead with the question and then we'll wrap up. All right. My name is Manak Shigopta, I'm coming from India. I come from a social enterprise called Goonj. And one of the things that we are very sort of passionately working on in India is on the issue of menstrual hygiene. And it sort of goes back, sort of taking the self-confidence bit several steps back and talking to girls, young girls and women, migrant women, who do not have a voice in the larger mapping of gender. Basically, one of the insights that we've had is that when girls at the age of 12, until the age of 50, when they're women, when they get told month after month that they are dirty, that they should not be doing several things in their day-to-day time, and how it affects their mind, how it affects their self-confidence, how it affects their sense of self. And how, I mean, I don't know of any study which has been done or any kind of insight which has been looked at for, because that's something which is happening, not just in India, but many other countries as well, to understand what it does to a woman, to a girl, when month after month for at least 10 to 15 to 20 years, she's told that she's dirty and she's not good and she's not good enough for this or that. So that is something that, I think, affects a girl's confidence at a very tender, very impressionable age. I just wanted to bring that. Thank you so much. I'm gonna give Gary and Maryam the last words and because they haven't then commented yet, but Gary, please. Sure, so I'm quick. What do we do to encourage men to do the caregiving? We start, we train health sectors on how to use prenatal visits because men around the world show up for prenatal visits, but we don't usually tell them, talk to them, engage them. That's one moment we try to get them. Engaging men in the caregiving professions, we're talking a huge amount about STEM. Not many folks even know that we have an acronym for the caring professions called HEAL. And we're not doing very much at all to teach men that nursing, that early childcare work, that all those are valid professions that need men in them as well. The other things we do are parent training. Men think we can be competent about writing code and all that, but put a man in front of a baby and many times he'll sort of feign that he doesn't know what to do. Hands-on parent training works and goes a long way in many parts of the world. Getting the messaging out there to change, we've partnered with some companies that do ads every day that shape how we think about it and I can give a free announcement to Tide here. As part of P&G, did a fabulous ad a few years back if you saw that about there's, the daughter said, Dad, can you braid my hair? And the dad responds, do you want a standard braid or a French braid? As a father of a daughter, I just went wow, melting moment of how tough it is to convince the world that we are competent parents as men. So I think all of the above to do it and leave policies plus flex time because we're not just fathers or parents and mothers when our children are babies. We've got a huge amount to do after that and even if we pass it, men don't take it. I see the hand going up. If we don't make it comfortable at the workplace for you to take the time off and not be seen as a slacker. So all the above. So thank you very much, Gary. Mary Ann. Breaking the glass ceiling is exciting and historic and so incredibly important for all the reasons we've heard around role models and pushing, but breaking that ceiling itself takes a lot of momentum and a lot of collaboration and many stars aligning and it can be painful to do just that. It's one thing to attract and bring women and gender diverse peoples and people across diversities into spheres where they haven't traditionally been, whatever that means in the context of your country. But it's a whole other victory to keep them there. And so policies and behaviors and champions play a really important role in the retention as well as the attraction part. And that's where I'm focused. Please join me in thanking our panelists for this extraordinary panel. And please offer second round of applause for Melisande who has been the mastermind and from the forum and everyone else who has made this session possible. To our distinguished professor from the Kennedy School at Harvard who articulated and set the stage and brought it all together. You yourself are an inspiration. Thank you for facilitating this. Thank you all for coming. Have a wonderful evening.